Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin).

Your e-Mails

Dear Nicey,
I'm from Britain but I live in California, so I like to keep up with current events back home with your website. Anyway, I saw your Biscuit of the Week review about dunking cookies from M&S and I thought: Hello, cookies, dunking, I've seen that before somewhere ... and I had -- there's a chain called Trader Joe's around here that's sold these for a while now. From the suspiciously similar design and packaging, I think they might be one and the same. (Plus, the "cookie" thing is a bit of a give-away.)Photos of same
Cheers,
Mat.

Nicey replies: Looks like a case of parallel evolution to me, as they are similar but not identical. It does, however, call into question the M&S claim to be the world's first cookie designed for dunking, which seemed a little presumptuous.

Oh nice mug by the way.

Mike Howells

Nicey,
firstly, congratulations on an excellent website. i've read it for a while and recently bought a packet of tim tams to try the slam. excellent stuff.
secondly, congratulations on being in time out which led to me rushing out and buying...
your excellent book (thirdly, congratulations on that too) i bought it for wifey (mine, not yours) yesterday and liked it so much that i missed my stop on the way home. if you can refund my cab fare, that would be great. i now know that cadburys fingers are suitable substitutes for tim tams and i'm looking forward to trying it at the earliest opportunity.
your book may well be this year's all-purpose christmas present book - we'll have to wait and see.
however, regarding the question of tea rounds of work, i was sickened to find no mention of Optimum Mug-Handle Compatibility - the art of choosing mugs to allow you to carry up to six mugs of tea per trip so long as you've got those nice big oval handles that you can get three stabilising fingers into. Those silly little mug handles with corners are the enemy of anyone who has to make a large round because it means making two trips back from the kitchen.
you're right about dark mugs and pink wafers though. they're horrid.
Well done.

Nicey replies: Mike,

Fourthly congratulations to you on raising such an important topic. Mug handles are often over looked. I did briefly mention in the book the unsatisfactory nature of novelty shaped handles, but as you rightly point out small ones with that little corner bit on are just as disastrous, never mind having to carry six of them.

Jenny Hughes

As a relative newcomer to your site, I have yet to find any reference to the most fundamental debate in the tea drinking world which is the cup vs mug divide. If all has been resolved, then I apologise for opening old wounds but there is a serious shortage of cup and saucer information on a site dominated by mug-gers.

Speaking as one who would have to be really desperate for tea and a sit down before I would even entertain the idea of a mug, (yuk!) I feel I ought to point out the top ten advantages of cups and saucers.

1 Most cups are wider at the top than mugs and accommodate a greater range of dunking biscuits without breaking them in two - which is a really upsetting thing to have to do

2 The narrowing shape of cups stops you dunking the biscuit too far and risking total collapse - the ultimate nightmare

3 Saucers are really handy if your nice cup of tea and a sit down is even better with a cigarette. As you have to wash the saucer anyway, it saves finding an ashtray

4 If you don't smoke, you can balance your biscuits on the saucer (don't try it with chocolate ones)

5 When you break the cup, you can save the saucer, (because it might come in useful one day) until you have about 20 odd ones in the cupboard and then you have always got something to give to the jumble sale

6 Bone china cups are thin and keep the tea hot.

7 Cups can be seriously tarty in a way mugs just can't. My favourite is a 50's pearlised, swirly, peach creation with a gold rim bought for £2 in Ponty market.

8 You get noticeably less tea in a cup which means you can justify having two nice cups of tea and a sit down and two cups equal more than a mug

9 Cups and saucers often come with teapots which are wondrous things and make a cup of tea and a sit down into an occasion. (Watch this space - there will be a follow up outburst on teapots vs teabags-in-a-mug)

10 Cups and saucers get mega brownie points from your Nain (Nan to those outside Wales) and other elderly relatives when they come visiting so that they don't notice the rest of the house is like a tip

12 This site is clearly not called nicemugofteaandasitdown, so you could probably get done under the Trades Descriptions Act unless you provide serious air space for cup-pers as well as mug-gers

Jen from Pontypridd

Nicey replies: Jenny,

OK, ok, I'll post your cup rant. We really don't care what people drink their tea out of just so long as they are happy.

Be careful now we know where you live we might come round and get a picture of your tarty mug on our next visit to Ponty. We make special trips there once or twice a year for sit down Faggots and Peas.